Politics will drive fracking decisions

With the latest public opinion polls showing that New Yorkers are evenly and perhaps permanently divided over hydraulic fracturing, those elected officials who will make the final decisions will have to look elsewhere for guidance.

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Posted Feb. 6, 2013 at 2:00 AM

Posted Feb. 6, 2013 at 2:00 AM

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With the latest public opinion polls showing that New Yorkers are evenly and perhaps permanently divided over hydraulic fracturing, those elected officials who will make the final decisions will have to look elsewhere for guidance.

The quest for some definitive scientific consensus about the dangers of hydrofracking continues, and no one expects there to be any resolution satisfactory to those on either side. As a result, the state keeps trying to come up with some regulations and justifications that will allow drilling to start somewhere, some time, with some safeguards in place.

There is too much money pushing for drilling to believe that this is not inevitable. And there are too many hypocrites, led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who loves the idea of exposing others to any potential danger as long as he is safe. Drill because we need the gas and the royalty money, the mayor says, but don't do it in the watershed that supplies his drinking water just in case it turns out to be as dangerous as the opponents say it is.

While legislators try to pin down the head of the state Department of Environmental Conservation and demonstrators keep up the chanting, it seems more and more likely that the state will soon arrive at the plan that the governor proposed last year.

He wanted to limit drilling to the Southern Tier, the place where gas is most plentiful and accessible. He said that if local governments banned drilling, then the state would respect that and limit its activities to regulating drilling where it was allowed.

Most important, he said that by having this activity concentrated in one area, the state could provide enough personnel to inspect operations and ensure that drillers were following all the regulations.

Had the polls showed support in one direction or another, the governor might have been able to push that way. But the division seems to be even and immovable, meaning that his compromise — giving a bit to each side but not enough to make either happy — is the most likely political solution.

And it has been clear for a very long time that the solution in this issue was always going to be political.